work samples
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A note on work samples and their relevance to the SLOWmail project: The first set of work samples listed below are projects recently completed by technologist Julian Bleecker. All of these have looked at existing social-technical practices, such as web browsing, wireless networking and the ways Personal Digital Assistants are used, and have proposed alternative usage patterns. The WiFi projects in particular were ways of exploring the use of a very popular, existing technology, but using it in an unexpected way. WiFi.Bedouin proposed that networks — often thought of as static and the same no matter where you access them — could be mobile and have different content based on where the network was located. For all of the noted work samples, one of the focal points of Bleecker’s research has been understanding how experiences, friendships, opinions, imaginings (“content”) are distributed and shared, and how social networks are thereby created and energized. SLOWmail proceeds in Bleeker's style of finding new perspectives and new usage scenarios for existing systems, in this case investigating how the user experience of email can be expanded to include opportunities for reflection and mindfulness. Furthermore, SLOWmail enlivens the writing of email to the level of an artful activity, attracting new possibilities for social interaction between correspondents, while the semantic tagging feature adds an additional, appealing content layer to the experience. The second category of work sample is a one-page overview of three exemplary 'slow design' projects hosted by slowLab. These projects demonstrate how (as with SLOWmail) the pace of daily encounters may be slowed and thereby expanded to include opportunties for awareness, reflection and deepening experiences.
Julian Bleecker work samples: > work sample 1: WiFi.ArtCache (2004-2006) > work sample 2: MobileScout (2004) > work sample 3: WiFi.Bedouin (2003-2004) > work sample 4: PDPal, Eyebeam Edition (2002) slowLab work samples: |
